Thursday, January 21, 2016

IT News Head Lines (Overclockers Club) 22/01/2016

New Algorithm Will Improve Google Chrome Load Times
Google
is getting ready to roll out a new compression algorithm, known as
Brotli, that will be able to compress data up to 26% more than its
current offering. First announced last September, Brotli will replace
the current engine known as Zopfli. Users will see improved load times
in the next release of Chrome and other browsers, such as Firefox, will
adopt the algorithm in the future. Brotli will also carry benefits for
users of the mobile version of Chrome including "lower data transfer fees and reduced battery use."
Source: The Verge

Next Generation NVIDIA GPUs to Use HBM2
The
next generation of Pascal based NVIDIA GPUs are reported to use the
HBM2 standard and will be built using the 16nm FinFET process. According
to the rumors, these cards are already being tested internally by
NVIDIA with mass production expected to start in the first half of this
year. The cards are then expected to be available for purchase in the
second half of the year. The Pascal core will support up to 16GB of HBM2
in consumer grade cards and up to 32GB on professional level cards.
HBM2 has a peak bandwidth of 1TB/s and the cards will also have access
to the Next-CUDA graphics architecture.
Source: WCCF Tech

Evidence Suggests Solar System Has a Ninth Planet
I
remember being taught in school that the Solar System has nine planets,
with Pluto being the most distant, but not too long ago, Pluto got
demoted to the newly created dwarf planet status, bringing the planet
count to eight. Now it looks like we may be back at nine planets thanks
to researchers at the California Institute of Technology, including Mike
Brown, one of the researchers that led to Pluto's demotion.
Back
in 2014 a paper was published by one of the Brown's former students, in
which 13 distant Kuiper Belt objects were described because of their
very unusual orbits. To explain these orbits, the paper suggested a
small planet might exist. This explanation seemed unlikely to Brown, but
it got him thinking, so he went down the hall and began collaborating
with a theorist. The theorist constructed a computer model to test the
mechanics involved, which constantly tested and was tested against
Brown's observations. Quickly Brown realized there was an odd alignment
between six of the 13 objects that simply should not happen randomly.
Initially
the planet explanation seemed to be the only answer, but it did not
quite fit right, until, almost by accident, they tried simulations where
the planet of these objects had anti-aligned orbits. This means the
part of their orbits that are closest to the Sun, called the perihelion,
are 180º opposite each other. While this would explain it, the
mechanics involved are so rare that it still was hard to accept, but
then they found this solution answers other questions. Other Kuiper Belt
objects have been discovered with unusual orbits that cannot normally
be explained, including some that orbit perpendicularly to the plane the
planets orbit on (known as the plane of the ecliptic). A ninth planet
perfectly explains these orbits.
Currently the researchers are
calling it Planet Nine and the math indicates it should have about 10
times the mass of Earth, and its average distance from the Sun is about
60 times that of the Earth, or 20 times that of Neptune. At this
distance it should take between 10,000 and 20,000 years to complete one
orbit. The speculation for its origin is that instead of four planetary
cores existing in the early Solar System, which eventually became the
gas giants, a fifth core could have also existed, but was ejected to its
current eccentric orbit when it got too close to Jupiter or Saturn. Now
we just need to find it, which could be very difficult depending on
where it is in its orbit, and how much Sunlight may be hitting it. If it
is near its farther point from the Sun, only the world's most powerful
telescopes might spot it, but if it is closer other telescopes have a
chance. In fact, it may have already been captured in previous surveys.
Source: California Institute of Technology

Hardware Roundup: Wednesday, January 20, 2016, Edition
The
middle of the week is here, bringing with it several items to help get
you through the day. We start with a review of the ASUS X99-M WS
motherboard, an mATX version of the Workstation line with support for
Haswell-E processors and USB 3.1. On the AMD side, we have the BIOSTAR
A68N-5200 motherboard, which places an A6-5200 APU on the motherboard
directly from the start, giving you a headstart on that low-powered PC.
If you just need something to hold your gear, perhaps the be quiet!
Silent Base 600 case is the one for you. For those needing a way to
better hear their games, the Aftershokz Gamez wireless gaming headset,
with its unique design and dual noise canceling microphones, could be
the solution. Ending things for today is some gaming on the go, as
the HP Pavilion Gaming Notebook 15-ak020NB featuring an Intel Core
i7-6700HQ CPU and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M GPU gets put to the test.Motherboards

Vulkan Developers Day Held by NVIDIA
Recently
NVIDIA held its first ever Vulkan Developers Day at the company's
Silicon Valley headquarters. For those who do not remember, Vulkan
is the next generation graphics and compute API being developed by the
Khronos Group, which also developed and maintained OpenGL. Like OpenGL,
Vulkan is going to be an open-standard API that will work with various
platforms and devices, and like DirectX 12, it is being designed to be
more efficient and allow applications direct control over the GPU. Such
low level APIs can significantly reduce CPU overhead, improving
performance. Both APIs can also work across multiple CPU threads,
further increasing performance.
At the Vulkan Developers Day,
several key engineers from NVIDIA and its partners discussed and gave
lectures on the best ways to leverage the power of Vulkan, and naturally
how to do so with NVIDIA hardware. John McDonald of Valve also spoke
about High Performance Vulkan Programming. The day ended with workshop
sessions and time for developers to speak with the engineers directly.
Once Vulkan is publicly released, recordings of the sessions will be
made available through NVIDIA's developer portal.
Source: NVIDIA Blog

XTREME GAMING XM300 Gaming Mouse Announced by GIGABYTE
GIGABYTE,
a pioneer in the motherboard industry that also manufacturers a wealth
of other gaming and technology products, has officially introduced the
XM300 gaming mouse. The XM300 is the latest product within the XTREME
GAMING series, and is the first gaming mouse to be featured within the
series. The GIGABYTE XM300 includes two OMRON micro switches that
provide excellent response while featuring durability of over 20 million
clicks, a 6400DPI optical sensor that is adjustable in increments of
50DPI and can track up to 200 inches per second at 50g acceleration, and
a high-quality cable that ensures free moment during gaming sessions.
The XM300 also offers gamers with RGB backlighting that allows for a
variety of customization options in terms of colors and lighting
effects, rubber side grips for enhanced control while swiping or lifting
the mouse, and extra Teflon feet that can be swapped out as the
attached ones wear down from extended use.
Source: TechPowerUp

Means Found to Potentially Prevent Defects in Integrated Circuits
Defects
can be very important in the semiconductor industry as these
imperfections can translate into missed release dates, broken products,
and lost revenue. Naturally then, many methods are used to reduce the
number of defects, but as the circuitry gets smaller it becomes much
harder to maintain a standard of less than one defect per 100 cm2. Luckily researchers at Argonne National Laboratory have made a discovery that should help, even as circuitry shrinks.
Current
methods for creating computer chips involve photoresist polymers, which
allow one to control where a material is etched. The problem is that
there is a limit to how small these polymers can be. The new solution is
to turn to block copolymer molecules, because they can self-assemble
into desired shapes with great density and precision. The trick has been
making sure the copolymers are in a stable state, so that the pattern
will not change, as opposed to metastable states. Copolymers can exist
in a metastable state for long periods of time though, so the
researchers used supercomputers to figure out the energy barriers
between these and lower-energy stable states. This allows the
researchers to find the path the molecules can take from a metastable
state to a stable state.
Armed with this knowledge, manufacturers
should be able to take advantage of block copolymers to significantly
reduce the defects in the products they produce. Now the researchers
will continue their work by looking into more materials, building more
complex patterns, and potentially creating 3D structures for more
advanced technologies.
Source: Argonne National Laboratory

Phishing Attack Targets LastPass
Security
researcher Sean Cassidy of Praesidio has revealed a phishing attack
targeting the LastPass password manager at ShmooCon 2016 in Washington
D.C. He calls it LostPass and describes it as "sophisticated enough
to fool users into handing over their passwords, email, and all the
passwords and documents stored in their LastPass vault." The
LostPass exploit seeks to deceive users by creating a pixel-for-pixel
replication of legitimate LastPass messages. In order to be exposed to
LostPass, "the intended victim must visit a malicious website or a
real website vulnerable to XSS. Once laden with malicious code, the
website can then prompt the user with a notification which shows login
expiry and an appeal to log in again -- made worse by the CSRF flaw as
the website can log the user out of LastPass to make the request appear
legitimate." At this point the attacker can gain access to the users account, even if two-factor authentication has been enabled, and can "install
a backdoor in their account via the emergency contact feature, disable
two-factor authentication, add the attacker's server as a trusted
device."
Cassidy informed LastPass of his phishing attack in November and the company has responded. A company spokeswoman stated, "We
did work directly with Sean Cassidy, and can confirm this is a phishing
attack, not a vulnerability in LastPass. However, we've released an
update that will prevent a user from being logged out by the phishing
tool, thereby mitigating the risk of the phishing attack. In addition,
LastPass has a built-in security alert to let you know when you've
entered your master password into a non-LastPass web form."
Source: ZDNet and Fast Company

GIGABYTE Announces Five New Intel MotherboardsGIGABYTE
has announced the addition of five Intel motherboards, targeted at the
High-End Desktop market, to the X170 and X150 series. The boards use the
C236 and C232 chipsets with support for Xeon E3-1200 v5 processors in
addition to sixth generation Core, Pentium, and Celeron CPUs. Three of
the boards, the X170-Extreme ECC, X150-PRO ECC and X150M-PRO ECC,
support ECC memory to help "ensure reliability for critical applications while helping to reduce system crashes." All boards include a PCI-e x16 Gen. 3 slot to provide "128Gb/s of unrestricted bandwidth to your graphics cards for better performance when running GPU intensive applications."
Also included are PCI-e Gen. 3 x4 connectors to accommodate M.2 SSDs,
providing up to 32Gb/s transfer speeds. Joining the previously mentioned
boards are the X150-PLUS WS and X150M-PLUS WS. VP of GIGABYTE's
Motherboard Business Unit Henry Kao described the new boards, stating "I
know GIGABYTE is providing the best HEDT experience with the X170 and
X150 Motherboards, combining performance, stability and durability."
Source: Press Release

Ubisoft Releases The Division Agent Origins Short Film to Amazon Prime Video
Ubisoft
has today announced a short film, "Agent Origins," will be available on
Amazon Prime Video. This short film provides a live-action narrative of
the backstory of the four agents in The Division, an upcoming
Ubisoft game. To create the film, Ubisoft worked with Corridor Digital
and used talent from RocketJump and devinsupertramp. Amazon Prime
members can watch the episode compilation today as a thirty-minute short
film, and five of those minutes are exclusive to Amazon Prime Video.The Division launches on March 8 for PC, Xbox One, and Playstation 4, but its closed beta begins January 28.
Source: Press Release

Hardware Roundup: Tuesday, January 19, 2016, Edition
Tuesday is here, bringing with it a few items to check out. The be quiet! Silent Base 800
mid-tower case gets reviewed to see just how quiet a system is inside
it, thanks to the sound dampening mats on the front and side panels, and
even a soundproofed window. We have a look at the Cooler Master V750
750W power supply, featuring an 80 PLUS Gold certification and a fully
modular design so you only need to hook up the cables your system
requires. Wrapping things up today is the Gigabyte P34W v5 gaming
laptop, a 14" model that includes an Intel Core i7-6700HQ CPU and NVIDIA
GeForce GTX 970M GPU.Cases